50,000 casualties in Europe alone every year According to serious estimates, more than half a million of such nosocomial infections - i.e. caught in the clinic - occur every year, in German hospitals alone. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), there are three million cases all over Europe, of which 50,000 are fatal. Antibiotic-resistant germs like MRSA (MRSA stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) present a particularly high danger in this context. In addition to the partly life-threatening danger for the patients, there is also an enormous economic damage which might amount to billions in Germany alone. For the US, there is an estimate by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), according to which nosocomial infections incur costs of more than 4.5 billion US dollars. In Great Britain, the National Health Service (NHS) estimates the additional costs at one billion pounds sterling every year. According to estimates, patients who contract MRSA in the clinic stay in sickbed up to four days longer on average and incur additional costs to the amount of 4,000 euro, in individual cases even up to 20,000 euro. The most frequent complications with weakened patients after a MRSA infection include wound infections, pneumonias, blood poisonings, and urinary tract infections. Research is going full steam ahead worldwide The tests at the Asklepios Clinic in Hamburg, Germany, were initiated by laboratory tests in which 99.9 percent of the bacteria, including the high hazard MRSA agents, were eliminated within a period of a few minutes up to two hours on copper surfaces. In contrast, the same microbes were able to survive up to three days on stainless steel surfaces. This is why the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has confirmed the antimicrobial effect of copper only recently, in March this year. Current research is closing a scientific gap which has existed for a very long time: "Humanity has had positive experience with the hygienic effect of copper for thousands of years", says Dr.-Ing. Anton Klassert, Business Manager of the German Copper Institute (DKI). "Against the backdrop of the current problems in the health care system, the DKI has now taken the first steps in order to apply these properties of copper in a modern hospital", according to the Director of the European Copper Competence Centre "Antimicrobial Properties". Visual material and the PowerPoint presentations of the speakers on the topic "Copper & Germs" are available on request. Contact for media representatives: Asklepios Clinics Hamburg Mathias Eberenz Tel.: +49 (40) 1818 826632 m.eberenz(kukac)asklepios.com German Copper Institute (DKI) Ingrid Keller Tel.: +49 (211) 47 96 314 ikeller(kukac)kupferinstitut.de------------------------------------------------------------------- Kérjük előfizetőinket, hogy az OTS anyagait minden esetben OTS-Hírvonal jelzéssel használják fel. Az MTI szó szerint, minden változtatás nélkül továbbítja az OTS-be beadott közleményeket, a szövegekért minden esetben a közleményben jelzett közlő a felelős. (c) Copyright MTI Zrt. További információt a (06-1) 441-9050 telefonszámon vagy a ots(kukac)mti.hu elektronikus levelező címen kaphat.
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